Ideas that Kindle Thought

Inkling Books is named after the Inklings, a group
of writers who met in Oxford, England from the mid-1930s
until the late 1940s. They included C. S. Lewis and J. R.
R. Tolkien, two writers who remain well-known today,
particularly though their recent blockbuster movies. The
name Inkling, Tolkien said, was "a pleasantly ingenious pun
in its way, suggesting people with vague or half-formed
intimations and ideas plus those who dabble in ink."

Quotations from our latest book: Chesterton on War and
Peace

To give you a taste of the book's marvelous contents, a
21-page collection of Chesterton quotes titled OnWar-Quotes
can be downloaded below. These quotes are not copyrighted.
You can print out as many copies of this document as you
like and give copies of this file to as many people as you
want.

Chesterton on War and Peace

Indeed I was a warm admirer of Gilbert Chesterton.…
When Hitlerism came, he was one of the first to speak out
with all the directness and frankness of a great and
unabashed spirit. Blessings to his memory.—Rabbi Stephen
S. Wise, American Jewish Leader, 1937.

In 1933 the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Norman Angell
for his key role in founding modern pacifism. It was
perhaps the greatest blunder in the history of the Nobel
Prize. The award should have gone to the author of this
book. Few writers have proven as tragically wrong as
Angell.

Just before the Great War, he assured admirers that Germany
posed no threat to peace. Two decades later and after
Hitler took power in Germany, he remained smugly confident:
“No one pretends now—as the papers above quoted used to
pretend—that war was due to the special wickedness of
Germans, the sudden swoop of the satanic wolf in a peaceful
world lusting to eat such harmless lambs as France and
Russia.” This blindness to evil, Chesterton warned, is why
“Pacifism and Prussianism [Militarism] are always in
alliance, by a fatal logic far beyond any conscious
conspiracy.”

Six years later that “satanic wolf” would plunge Europe
into the bloodiest war in human history, a war that
began—precisely as Chesterton predicted in 1932—over a
border dispute with Poland. Even the horrors of the Second
World War were foreseen by Chesterton, who warned in
September 1917 that, if Germany was not forced to change,
“Wars more and more horrible” would follow.

Pacifists were not the only targets of Chesterton’s pen. He
directed fierce broadsides at all those who, by word or
deed, make peace less likely and war more terrible. On
these pages you’ll discover startling insights into the
minds of militarists, internationalists, racial
supremacists, and all those who grow weary as a war grows
long. Remarkably similar personalities and arguments remain
with us in today’s debates about war and peace.

Unfortunately, this book, which might have altered the
course of history, did not exist in 1933. It’s a recently
completed collection of 111 articles that Chesterton wrote
for the Illustrated London News between 1905 and
1922. In those articles, written some two decades before
the Second World War, Chesterton explained in practical
terms how the next war could be avoided. He was a true
pacifist, seeking genuine peace without sacrificing human
dignity and freedom.

Finally, while Hitler was still an unknown soldier, he
blasted as foul and absurd then fashionable racist ideas
that Nazism would later exploit. It is no exaggeration to
call him Hitler’s first foe.

Contents of Chesterton on War and Peace

Foreword

1 Battling Illusions, 1905–1913

A Time of
Illusion—Editor
A Warning Sign, October 7, 1905
Scientific Barbarism, August 4, 1906
Militarism and Boys, October 6, 1906
Hating Nations Intelligently, October 20, 1906
Koepenick’s Comic Captain, October 27, 1906
Chesterton’s New Masthead, January 5, 1907
International or Cosmopolitan, June 22, 1907
Weakest Link, July 20, 1907
Giving Up War, April 25, 1908
The Importance of Why, August 15, 1908
Humanitarian Hate, September 19, 1908
A War of Men Not Ships, March 27, 1909
Journalistic Fear Mongering January 8, 1910
Race and Politics April 30, 1910
Cultivating His Garden September 17, 1910
Wars Out of Love December 31, 1910
More Sacred than Nations January 14, 1911
Excuses with Distant Parallels October 21, 1911
Doubting Informants November 18, 1911
Observing the Military September 14, 1912
Liberalism’s Lost Courage June 21, 1913
Militarism and Children July 26, 1913
Prussian Kings December 13, 1913

3 Battling Pacifism 1915

Chesterton’s Pen—Editor
Seizing the Pen May 22, 1915
Free and Separate May 29, 1915
Spoiled by Words June 5, 1915
Conscription Debated June 12, 1915
Casting Down Idols June 19, 1915
Pacifism and Treason July 3, 1915
Honour and Modesty in War July 24, 1915
A World of Pigmies August 7, 1915
Pacifist Incompetence August 14, 1915
Edith Cavell October 30, 1915
Henry Ford’s Pacifism December 11, 1915

4 Battling Militarism 1916

Ernst Haeckel—Editor
Crimes Unpunished January 1, 1916
Inside the German Mind January 15, 1916
Why War? January 29, 1916
Pride as Sin February 26, 1916
Zeppelins and the Press March 18, 1916
War Between Races April 8, 1916
Polish Patriotism May 20, 1916
Germany’s Inhumane Hope June 24, 1916
Germany as God August 19, 1916
Cowardice and Revenge September 2, 1916
Averting the Peril September 16, 1916
Defective National Feeling October 7, 1916
Lawlessness as Law October 28, 1916
Chivalry in War November 11, 1916
War’s Big Picture December 16, 1916

5 Battling Teutonism 1917

Henry Cabot Lodge—Editor
Milk and Water Pacifism January 27, 1917
Peace Without Victory February 3, 1917
America Enters the War April 14, 1917
Great German Heresy April 21, 1917
Pacifist Nightmares June 2, 1917
Germans Without Flaws July 14, 1917
War Weariness August 25, 1917
Lordly Peace-Mongers September 1, 1917
Peace that Will End Peace September 8, 1917
Wars More Horrible September 29, 1917
Praise with Faint Damns October 13, 1917
Playing the Race Card October 20, 1917
Germany’s Horrible Holiday October 27, 1917
Discrediting Despotism November 10, 1917
Whitewashing Barbarians December 15, 1917

7 Battling Internationalism 1919–1922

Grand
Schemes—Editor
Nations Are Unique January 4, 1919
Polish Nationalism January 11, 1919
Poland and Peace-mongers January 18, 1919
Protecting Small Nations February 15, 1919
Polish Precipice April 5, 1919
Christianity and War April 12, 1919
Equity for Victims May 10, 1919
Unrepentant Germany May 24, 1919
Criminal Germany May 31, 1919
Barbaric Germany June 14, 1919
Civilization Leads June 21, 1919
False Teutonic History June 28, 1919
Hindenberg and German Guilt July 19, 1919
Cannibal Theory July 26, 1919
Ludendorff’s Francs-tireurs September 13, 1919
Civilisation as a Choice July 10, 1920
War to End All Pacifisms July 31, 1920
H. G. Wells and Nationalism June 4, 1921
Armament Debates November 26, 1921
Agreeing to War December 3, 1921
A Boy’s Bow January 7, 1922
Weary of War May 6, 1922
Imperialistic Internationalism June 17, 1922
King Arthur’s Legacy December 16, 1922

Foreword to Chesterton on War and Peace

My initial plan for this book was to include between two
covers virtually everything Chesterton wrote about war
before 1923. That soon proved impractical, if not
impossible. Chesterton was a prolific writer and during the
First World War he focused his enormous energy on writing
about the fighting from almost every angle. A draft of this
book was approaching a thousand pages, without many
clarifying notes, when good sense dictated I narrow the
focus.

Once that decision was made, the next step was obvious. I
would pick the best of the best. This book is built around
a careful selection from the articles Chesterton wrote for
“Our Note-Book,” his weekly column in the Illustrated
London News. Before radio and television, the Illustrated
London News was highly influential, reaching a large
audience throughout Britain, across Europe, and in the
United States. The articles you see here were chosen for
their historical importance and their lasting relevance to
today’s debates about war and peace. That’s precisely how
Chesterton intended for them to be taken. In his first
article after the war, Chesterton told his readers what his
guiding principle had been during the war.

"I have my own opinions about those internal political
quarrels, but I have deliberately kept them out of the
notes it has been my business to jot down on this page for
the last four years. Though the form of them has been in
the crudest sense journalistic, I have tried to keep the
philosophy of them in some sense historic. I have tried to
think of the great war as it would have appeared to our
remote ancestors if they had known it was coming, as it
will appear to our remote descendants when they consider
how it came."

As I edited, I kept a key principle in mind—to allow
Chesterton to speak as clearly to this generation as he did
to his own. That’s the reason for the chapter introductions
and the many footnotes. Chesterton was writing at a
particular moment in history—that’s what he meant by “in
the crudest sense journalistic.” When he mentions people,
places and events, he typically alludes to them, knowing
his contemporaries had read about them in newspapers, or
that they were common knowledge among the well-informed.
Through these notes, you’ll learn what his readers knew.

There’s another reason why these articles matter.
Chesterton was present at the birth of the modern age. Many
issues we debate today had their coming out party in London
during the first two decades of the twentieth century. Just
before the war, disarmament, internationalism and pacifism
were being offered as enlightened solutions to the problem
of war. Chesterton’s experience with those ideas could not
have been better. Many were championed by people who were
his friends, including H. G. Wells and Bernard Shaw. Almost
all came from people he personally knew. Most important of
all, when he debated those ideas with his usual good sense,
humor and eloquence, they were as fresh as a morning
breeze. Today, when many of those debates have grown stale
and predictable, it helps to visit that earlier debate and
recapture some of its excitement and vividness.

With only a few breaks for health or travel, Chesterton
wrote for the Illustrated London News from 1905 to
1936—an incredible 31 years. When the war began in August
1914, he had been writing his column for almost nine years.
He would continue to write for it until his death on June
14, 1936, with his last article appearing on the following
Saturday, June 20.

Chesterton’s first article, published on September 30,
1905, was a light-hearted look at a time (still with us) in
late summer when the government takes a holiday and so
little seems to happen that reporters become desperate for
stories. Using the paradoxical style for which he was
famous, Chesterton flipped the issue around.

"I cannot imagine why this season of the year is called by
journalists the Silly Season: it is the only season in
which men have time for wisdom. This can be seen even by
glancing at those remarkable documents, the daily papers.
As long as Parliament is sitting, the most minute and
fugitive things are made to seem important. We have
enormous headlines about the vote on a coastguard’s supply
of cats’ meat, or a scene in the House over the perquisites
of the butler of the Consul at Port Said. Trivialities, in
a word, are made to seem tremendous, until the Silly
Season, or the season of wisdom, begins. Then, for the
first time, we have a moment to think.… We begin to discuss
“The Decay of Home Life,” or “What is Wrong?” or the
authority of the Scriptures, or “Do We Believe?” These
really awful and eternal problems are never discussed
except in the Silly Season.… Yes; it is only during this
fleeting time that we can really think of the things that
are not fleeting. The time of our holidays is the only time
in which we can really manage to turn our minds to these
grave and everlasting riddles that abide behind every
civilisation.… The Silly Season is the only time when we
are not silly."

Chesterton’s first war article appeared two weeks later,
when he spoke against the “scientific” nonsense that Europe
had outgrown war. It was vintage Chesterton, bucking
fashionable opinion in a way that would later be proved
right. He believed complexities such as war are often best
seen as paradoxes. On one hand, he hated war for all the
pain and suffering it brought. He began his public writing
career as one the few who opposed the popular Boer War, and
he did so with obvious sympathy for the out-gunned Boer
farmers. That illustrates something exceptional about him.
He was intensely patriotic, but his patriotism was as broad
as the world. Imagine a happily married man who wants other
men to be happy in their marriages. That’s his love for
England and the world.

But it’s also true that few modern writers have as
unabashedly praised the reasons why men go to war as avidly
as Chesterton. You can it see in his best known novel, The
Napoleon of Notting Hill. It’s a tale that delights in
London’s rich colours and traditions, and those who would
replace that richness with a grey and soulless efficiency
soon find themselves under attack. In an early poem
Chesterton hinted at why Notting Hill fought: “There is one
sin: to call a green leaf grey.”

In an era when most English, whatever their politics,
worshiped their Empire, he was a leading champion of the
right of little nations, such as Ireland, Poland, and the
future Israel, to be free rather than puppets of powerful
nations or pawns in a so-called march of progress. As his
brother would write, “he denied the right of any nation or
Empire, on the pretence of being more civilized, more
progressive, more democratic, or more efficient, to take
away from another nation its birthright of independence.”
To those who gloated about being part of an empire on which
the sun never set, he replied that he “had no use for an
empire that had no sunsets.”

Along with his love for nations came a dislike for those
who would destroy them, putting in their place something
not in keeping with human nature. He criticized the
cosmopolitan, that alleged citizen of the world, for being
so wrapped up in himself he gives his heart to no country.
He believed the best answer to the hatreds that fuel wars
did not lie in eliminating patriotic feelings. When
patriotism is crushed, he warned, something unhealthy
appears. He believed that the way to peace lay in teaching
people to appreciate the love others feel for their
country. Wells might see nationalities as mere raw material
for a scientifically run World State, but Chesterton saw in
them something enduring and uniquely human. As a Christian,
he agreed with the last chapter in the Bible, where, at the
end of history, nations not only exist, they have their
wounds healed by a Tree of Life (Revelation 22:2). Our
nationalities are to be as eternal as our personalities.

Chesterton warned of the dangers posed by
internationalists, who would create a mockery of peace by
concentrating all power in the hands of a chosen few.
Chesterton believed Europe’s peace depended on the larger
democracies helping to protect smaller nations from a
recognized aggressor. When German militarism emerged again,
he believed it would turn east, as indeed it did, so
Britain and France should help Poland and its neighbours
remain free. Once Germany dominated Eastern Europe, its
two-front problem would be solved. It could turn west to
attack Britain and France, precisely as it did in 1940.
After World War II, Chesterton’s idea became the North
Atlantic Treaty Organization, a sensible alternative to a
League of Nations that was too weak and unfocused or a
World State that was too strong and rigid.

German militarism, which Chesterton often called
Prussianism, was another danger he understood perhaps
better than anyone else. When you see Prussianism in this
book, think of militarism with an accompanying racial
justification in the once respectable idea of Teutonism.
Chesterton fiercely loathed both. His contempt for
Teutonism in the international arena and eugenics within a
society made him one of Nazism’s earliest foes.

Finally, there was no affection lost between Chesterton and
pacifists. He poked gentle fun of the older Quaker
pacifists, regarding them as harmless. But he was disturbed
by a new pacifism growing more powerful in his day. He
believed its leaders were vain and its followers too
simple-minded to think beyond clichés. He pointed out a key
fact—that these new pacifists often argued alongside
militarists. Both claimed Germany wasn’t responsible for
the war, so it shouldn’t be punished. Pacifists might argue
that man was outgrowing nature’s struggle of ‘tooth and
claw,’ while militarists might link war to progress, since
it ensured that the ‘fit’ ruled, but both made the same
mistake. Both believed might made right. That, Chesterton
repeatedly warned, was pure folly. An unpunished Germany
would be an unrepentant Germany that would repeat its
aggressions. History has shown just how correct he was. It
took the disgrace and destruction of World War II to get
Germany to abandon its fascination with militarism and the
“Strong Man.”

When Chesterton wrote about war, he often drew a sharp
distinction between civilization and barbarism. A civilized
society, such as Europe’s historic Christendom, had not
outgrown war. It had learned how to fight properly,
respecting a chivalry so little understood today that the
word carries an unmistakable medieval air. Civilizations,
he stressed, believe that societies and individuals are
responsible for their deeds and hold them accountable. In
contrast, barbarians place the blame for events on external
forces, whether primitive demons haunting a stream or
abstract, scientific forces such as race (Nazism) or class
(Marxism). No matter how technologically advanced, a
society dominated by fatalism and determinism is barbarian,
because it places some ‘thing’ above human decisions and
personal bravery.

Now a few technical details. There’s always a problem
handling tense in a collection like this. Everything
happened in the past, so some purists may insist I write in
the past tense. I disagree. If we are to experience these
issues as Chesterton’s readers did, we must read them as if
we were living back then, with each article fresh off the
press, smelling of ink and new paper. That’s why I slip
into the past tense only to look back. Of course in a book
this long, sometimes I’ll get that wrong, but I feel that’s
better than covering these wonderful articles with the dust
of ages. There are also differences between British and
American spelling. You’ll find both here. Everyone knows
“civilization” is the same word as “civilisation.” This
book also has the usual problem with capitalizing terms
such as pacifism and my solution to that was to muddle
through in spite of inconsistencies. Finally, keep in mind
that the semi-bold text you see wasn’t in the original
articles. I’ve added it to make it easier to find
memorable, quotable passages.

One final remark. as a writer, Chesterton has great depth.
Read this book several times, and each time you’ll gather
more insights into how our sad and troubled world works and
what might be done about that. The issues he deals with
here are a part of the permanent human condition and are
matters from which we cannot escape, however hard we might
try. War is merely the most obvious example of situations
when we must face with courage, persistence and wisdom an
evil that some would deny and others would bend before.
Chesterton was an honest and brave man. He did not lie and
would not bend. We can learn much from him.

—Michael W. Perry, Seattle, February 25, 2008

A Perspective: Chesterton on War and
Peace

Recently, Inkling has turned more and more of its
attention G. K. Chesterton, an English writer whose views
and great talent as a writer made him proto-Inkling. People
who love Lewis almost always love Chesterton. Those whose
love of Tolkien has grown beyond the 'elves and ents'
stage, also find him delightful.

But there is a major difference. Lewis and Tolkien lived in
the cloistured world of Oxford University, spending most of
their time working in specialized disciplines. Chesterton
was the intellectual equivalent of a world-class,
heavy-weight boxer. He worked in London and for most of his
adult lived at the center of a storm of controversy, giving
his opinion freely and defending it brilliantly. It is said
that he never lost a public debate. Having read an exchange
of letters he had with the playwright George Bernard Shaw,
I can believe that. Shaw had advanced an argument that
would have reduced most opponents to foolish babbling.
Since the two were personal friends, he should have know
better than to try that with Chesterton. In a single
paragraph, Chesterton reduced Shaw to utter incoherence. He
then kindly ended the debate.

Two aspects of Chesterton are particularly important today.
First, when he exploded on the literary scene during the
Second Boer War (1899–1902),, the Victoria Age was ending.
(Queen Victoria would die in early 1901.) What might be
called the Modern Age was beginning. Almost everything
people today regard as modern and fashionably progressive
isn't new. Chesterton was commenting on it a century ago,
agreeing with some aspects and blasting others. And because
those ideas were then as fresh as a morning breeze, there's
something equally refreshing about his responses. Today,
when many debates have grown stale and predictable, it's
fascinating to read Chesterton.

To give but one recent example, when suicide bombers first
began blowing themselves up, our politicians tended to fall
into two camps. Some, mostly on the right, regarded this
behavior with legitimate disgust, but talked nonsense when
they accused these people of being cowards. It may be
cowardly to plant a bomb on a bus and leave it to explode
later, which is what Palestinian terrorists did when I
lived in Israel, but in general it can't be cowardly to do
something that results in your death. The other group,
mostly on the left, seemed to regard these suicide bombers
with awe and showed an enthusiasm for they considered their
"legitimate grievances." Radical, leftist chic for Marxist
revolutionaries had morphed into covert support for
anti-Semitic terrorists and Islamic theocracies. Odd to say
the least.

Chesterton would have been in neither camp. He would have
blasted the suicide bombers (and the broader terrorist
movement) for their abysmal lack of
chivalry rather than for their cowardice.
He recognized a right to fight for what you believe and
thought all wars that mattered were religious wars, meaning
they were about the things that people whole sacred. But he
utterly deplored those who drew the weak and helpless into
their struggle, making them suffer and die. He would have
also blasted as "barbarous" the greater cause for which
these terrorists were fighting. In fact, next to
Prussianism, Chesterton would define barbarism by pointing
to the world of Islam. Civilized societies, Chesterton
stressed, told barbaric ones how they should live and not
vice-versa.

Chivalry and civilization contrasted with barbarism--how
often do we hear that sort of discussion today?
Conservatives grasp for a word that conveys their disgust
for suicide bombers, but can't come up with anything better
that cowardly. Why? Because, with a few exceptions,
chivalry has faded from our thoughts. leaving the word with
a vague, uncertain meaning that invokes images of knights
in armor. Chivalry was dead in the early 1970s when
feminists criticized its last, dying ember--men holding
doors for women. The idea that chivalrous code of conduct
governs warfare and conflict has disappeared entirely,
replaced by cold and sterile talk about human rights that
pit the terrorist's 'rights' against those of his victims,
resulting in total confusion. Chesterton, a man for all
seasons and all ages, enables us to see ideas and thoughts
that our culture has kept from us.

We see the same blinkered blindness in liberalism's
inability to distinguish between civilization and
barbarism. For liberals (and many conservatives),
civilization refers to the society whose movies, music,
gadgetry and consumer goods dominate the world. Such people
labor under the illusion that if the Arab young merely pick
up the fascination our youth have with rock stars, all the
world will live in harmony. Add to that mixture
multiculturalism, and you have the world "civilized" when
Arab music is as likely to be sung in Peoria as rock music
in Riyadh. Chesterton would have called that nonsense.
Civilization centers on the rule of law and the protection
of the weak. In a civilized society, the poorest man can
force the richest to repay a debt. In a barbaric one, might
makes right. Islamic societies, where women can be punished
for defending themselves against rapists, are barbarous. We
need not pander to them and those who kill to spread such
barbarism are particularly vile.

Second, Chesterton had a remarkable ability to spot
historical trends and sense the direction they were headed.
Because he believed strongly that human destiny lay in
human hands, he also believed that we have a responsibility
to direct our collective lives in ways that enhance human
dignity and freedom. That's why he wrote so boldly and
bluntly, so often going against the current than on on
occasion he expresses surprise to find he is in the
majority.

One debate in which Chesterton was such a lively
participant involved just that ability to foresee the
future and should have earned Chesterton "Hitler's First
Foe." I could say a lot about that--far too much to put
down here. What Chesterton said about war forms the heart
of Inkling's next major book, Chesterton on War and
Peace: Battling the Ideas and Movements that Led to Nazism
and World War II. In it, Chesterton diagnoses the
depth of Germany's "might makes right" heresy long before
anyone else, correctly predicting during the First World
War that a second war with Germany would follow that would
make the horrors of the first look like nothing.

And for us today, virtually everything he had to say about
the dangers that a Prussianized Germany posed to
civilization apply equally well to the dangers radical
Islam poses to a Western society that's far weaker and less
confident that it was in 1914. You might want to add it to
your 'must read' list.

Cecil Chesterton's Biography of Gilbert

Most Chesterton fans are aware that G. K. Chesterton's
younger brother Cecil published a biography of Gilbert in
1908. Unfortunately, except for a brief academic reprint in
the 1960s, his book has been out of print ever since. To
celebrate the 100th anniversary of its first publication,
Inkling Books has brought out a Centennial Edition. As with
almost all Inkling reprints, this book is enhanced to make
its reading more enjoyable and informative.

All the original text is there, along with the book's four
pictures. The new edition also includes the following.

Three additional pictures, including a marvelous
cover photograph of the Chesterton family from about 1908
supplied by Aidan Mackey.

A foreword by Aidan Mackay, author and Chesterton
scholar.

An introduction by Brocard Sewell, who worked with
Chesterton at G.K.'s Weekly.

An appreciation of Cecil written by Gilbert. Cecil
died just after the end of World War I of an illness
acquired in the trenches.

No less than 223 footnotes explaining historical and
biographical details that are less well-known today than
in 1908.

A detailed index.

There are also seven appendices created just for this
edition. They provide an even fuller snapshot of Chesterton
in 1908:

Chesterton's oft-quoted 1907 poem about the people of
England, "The Secret People."

Chesterton's early 1908 article in New Age,
"Why I am not a Socialist.

H. G. Well's reply to Chesterton in that same
magazine.

Chesterton's response to Wells

Bernard Shaw's famous "Chesterbelloc" response to
Chesterton.

Chesterton's response to Shaw, closing out the
debate.

A. G. Gardiner's 1908 description of Chesterton.
Gardiner was Chesterton's editor at the Daily
Mail. Here's a sample to give you a taste of just
how marvelous it is.

Walking down Fleet Street some day you may meet a form
whose vastness blots out the heavens. Great waves of hair
surge from under the soft, wide-brimmed hat. A cloak that
might be a legacy from Porthos floats about his colossal
frame. He pauses in the midst of the pavement to read the
book in his hand, and a cascade of laughter descending
from the head notes to the middle voice gushes out on the
listening air. He looks up, adjusts his pince-nez,
observes that he is not in a cab, remembers that he ought
to be in a cab, turns and hails a cab. The vehicle sinks
down under the unusual burden and rolls heavily away. It
carries Gilbert Keith Chesterton.

Finally, I should say something about the book's title,
G. K. Chesterton: A Criticism. When I mention that
title to some people, their response is along the lines of,
"Yuck, all he is going to do is find fault with
Chesterton." Not so. "Criticism" is used in the specialized
sense of literary criticism. Cecil, who originally
published the book anonymously, is looking at Chesterton as
a writer, describing what he what he believes and how well
he writes in defense of those beliefs. This is a biography
of Chesterton as a thinker by someone who knew his thought
better than anyone else. If you want to understand
Chesterton, this book is a must-have.

Most bookstores can order the book through Ingram, the
largest book wholesaler in the world, and it's available at
most online bookstores, here and abroad. But I strongly
suggest that you order it from the American Chesterton
Society. You can find them at:

You might also want to ask your school or local public
library to get a copy. The sooner a book is requested after
it's published, the more likely they are to get a copy.
Then others can enjoy this wonderful book.

A Little Excitement

Ah, but if only life at
Seattle's Inkling Books were as sedate a dabbling in ink
like an Oxford professor. And if excitement meant a relaxed
evening at a local pub listening to an early draft of
The Lord of the Rings, surrounded by friends and
good food. Instead, my long labors to create the
first-ever, book-length chronology of The Lord of the
Rings resulted in my being sued in federal court,
before my book was even published, by some rather
unpleasant Manhattan lawyers.

But he who who laughs last laughs best. Not being the sort
to be pushed around by bullies, particularly when I know
what the law actually says, I fought the typical injustice
of such disputes by defending myself. And yes, I know the
old adage that, "He who defends himself has a fool for a
lawyer." But I suspected that my case was an exception,
that with a bit a hard work, this clever small-town boy
could out think those big-city lawyers.

Besides, I had a family tradition to defend. My
great-great-great-grandfather (a white farmer) stood up to
the Ku Klux Klan in 1870s Alabama. What were my troubles in
comparison to that? And by defending myself, I flipped the
economics of lawsuits upside down. A conference with the
judge became a $1.25 bus ride for me and a pleasant
learning experience. For my opponents it meant the costs of
lawyers in both NYC and Seattle and the unpleasant
experience of losing the dispute in question.

Just keep in mind that I don't recommend lawsuits if you
can avoid them. For one thing, they generate an enormous
amount of paper. The filings and correspondence in my
dispute fill most of a file cabinet drawer, with most of it
generated by their futile attempt to make a case when there
was none. If environmentalists really want to save trees,
they should get behind tort reform. It'd do far more than
whining about recycling iPods.

In the end, I won that lawsuit in the best possible
way--far better than any win in a courtroom, which in the
grey world of copyright law might hinge on some minor
factor. No, after they bailed out of concurrent motions for
summary judgment, the judge curtly dismissed their case
"with prejudice," which is judge-speak for: "My mind is
made up. This case is so clear, it need not go to trial."
It's like winning a boxing match in the first thirty
seconds of the first round. Not even close.

The book that was the source of the dispute is now out and
it's one of Inkling's modest bestsellers—Untangling
Tolkien. You'll find it by clicking on "Inkling Books"
in the sidebar and then on "J. R. R. Tolkien."

Margaret Sanger's Fashionable Racism

We have other
books that are also provocative. Under "Eugenics" there's
The Pivot of Civilization in Historical
Perspective, which proves from original source
documents that Planned Parenthood's founder, Margaret
Sanger, championed a fashionable, 'blue state' racism that
regarded immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe as
"unfit" to be parents. In case your wondering, that's why
modern Catholic hate Planned Parenthood. Catholics have as
much right to loathe Sanger's creation as black people have
to loathe the Ku Klux Klan.

A Nineteenth-Century Hillary Clinton

In
anticipation of Hillary Clinton's bid for the White House,
I've brought back into print the published speeches of the
Hillary of the nineteenth century--Victoria Woodhull, the
first woman to run for President. You'll find her books
under "Eugenics." Her 1870s speeches all across America
pioneered our sex-mad modern world. In Free Lover
I suggest that Aldous Huxley's 1932 Brave New
World describes the sort of world she once championed.
There is also Lady Eugenist, which shows that
historians have gotten the history of eugenics all wrong.
The first person to widely promote eugenics wasn't Charles
Darwin's cousin, Francis Galton, as so many books claim. As
no less an authority than H. G. Wells pointed out, it was
Victoria Woodhull. In fact she retired from promoting
eugenics in 1901, the same year that Francis Galton took up
the cause in earnest. Feminist should make a case out of
this blatant sexism, giving a man credit in the sciences
for what a woman did first.

Handy Navigation Tools

In the sidebar, you'll find
some handy navigation tools. "About Inkling" describes us.
"Inkling Blog" has a placeholder book review at present.
Soon it'll discuss the books we're working on. Inkling
University will have material, now at a different website,
that discusses in detail topics such as eugenics that are
covered in our books. It should be an excellent resource
for student doing research papers.

Also in the sidebar are two handy tools. You can use Google
to search this website, and you can use Yahoo's Babel Fish
to translate pages into some twelve languages. Just keep in
mind that we have no control over the translation, so in
some cases what appears may be a bit strange in places.